Our society is getting more and more aware of the suffering of animals, and more and more practises with animals that have been considered “normal” for a long time, are now being questioned. There are some practises, however, which still strangely escape our (or at least society’s) scrutiny.

One of those is recreational fishing: your average joe sitting by a river with his spincast reel, trying to catch something. Most people still view this kind of fishing as not merely a harmless, but even a beneficial pastime. It is considered a great alternative to shopping or tweeting or any of those countless more stressful things we spend our days doing. And yes, in this sense, sitting by the water, concentrated on nothing much, has a certain appeal.

But we can of course only see it this way if we forget about the fish. Any relief of stress the fisher(wo)man may experience, goes at the cost of huge stress for the fish, obviously.

I find it strange that it takes us that long to see this. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising. Some things are so omnipresent and so generally tolerated (or even encouraged) that it gets hard to see them in another light.  Some forms of injustice are so widespread that they have become invisible.

This video with Evan McGregor captures tries to show things in another light. From the viewpoint of the fish. Well done.

Fishing hurts. Obviously.